Modern Snake Review

Snake is one of those games everyone knows. It’s popularity was forged in the mall arcades of the 70s, and it has been ported to almost every platform. Ever. Everyone has redone it, and so any developer that touches it best come correct.

Modern Snake, at the very least, excels in the area of minimalist design. I liked that there were no extraneous elements; it kept enough familiar designs, like the segmented snake, and tossed in colors and touchscreen compatibility to differentiate it from the original forms. The green worked well on the stark white playing area. The developer did well to add options to spice up what would otherwise be a one-dimensional game. There were options to speed up or slowdown game speed, to have a two-player local game, to play with or without walls and to play with on-screen directional buttons or by swiping.

Which brings us to the gameplay. It was great to see practically no long tutorial was needed; my job was to guide the perpetually forward-moving serpent as it consumed randomly pellets (which concurrently made it to grow by one unit). In the basic form, I had to avoid the walls of the playing area, as any direct head it ended the game. The trick was to be quick enough with my swipes/taps to get to the pellets without touching the walls or own tail.

As I mentioned earlier, the play options were nice. I was able to take a leaf from a popular alteration to the original gameplay and play without walls. In this format, instead of he wall causing an end to a play round, the snake went through and back in on the opposite side. On paper, it was easier to play, but not so much if the snake got too long, for obvious reasons.

I liked the game, and not just because I loved the original arcade game; this was a fresh take on a classic.